Israel's Hezbollah Problem
What if there's no solution?
Please note that the following article was written before last night’s Iranian ballistic missile attack on northern Israel.
Last week’s news of an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire was greeted with remarkably little fanfare. This was because everyone knew the fighting would continue, and that’s exactly what happened. Hezbollah rejected the deal and continued firing; Israel continued attacking in South Lebanon, with one strike killing a Lebanese army general and two soldiers, and yesterday struck Beirut. In short, nobody expects a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon anytime soon.
According to the ceasefire agreement, several “pilot” security zones would be established in Hezbollah-free areas of southern Lebanon, with no Hezbollah presence south of the Litani river. Inside the pilot zones, “the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors.” Soon afterwards, though, Hezbollah rejected the ceasefire. This wouldn’t be a problem if the Lebanese army were capable or willing to dismantle Hezbollah’s terrorist apparatus, but despite the government’s unprecedented declaration of opposition to Hezbollah, they aren’t.
But it doesn’t seem that Israel can destroy Hezbollah either. While Hezbollah has undoubtedly been severely weakened over the past few years, primarily because of the folly of their decision to join Hamas’s war, they retain sufficient power within Lebanon to prevent the army from taking them on. This situation seems likely to persist as long as the Iranian regime survives.
So while Israel has taken extensive territory in southern Lebanon, and caused severe damage to the organization since the audacious beeper attack (with maybe up to 8,000 fighters killed), it once again faces a war of attrition where this time the main weapon in Hezbollah’s armory is their fiber optic drones, which have caused a steady drip of Israeli casualties over the past few weeks. This was symbolized by the government’s tone-deaf celebration of the retaking of Beaufort Fortress, 26 years after Israel hastily withdrew. Hezbollah may no longer harbor ambitions of conquering the Galilee, but its return to its guerrilla origins is proving effective.
The problem with the ceasefire agreement is that Lebanon wants a ceasefire but Israel wants Hezbollah’s destruction. Post-October 7th, Israeli doctrine holds that Hezbollah exists in one of two states: weakening under Israeli pressure, or rebuilding. The ceasefire, given Lebanon’s institutional weakness, would almost certainly mean the latter.
In August 2025, the Lebanese government announced the “Homeland Shield Plan”, which promised to bring all weapons under state control by the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, this never came to pass, because Hezbollah has an effective veto over the army, with Iranian forces now controlling much of the organization. For Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah, the Lebanese army would need to take control of Hezbollah positions north of the Litani River, Dahiyeh, and the Beqaa Valley, but this is currently a fantasy.
Clearly, then, there is little hope that the agreed ceasefire will lead to fundamental change. But what about continuing the war? There’s little evidence that this will do the trick either. As Jonathan Spyer has noted, Israel can’t conquer Lebanon, so at best it can try to create a buffer zone between Hezbollah and Israel’s north “while establishing deterrence against the organization by hitting it hard.” In the meantime, though, the north continues to suffer. As Shiran Ohayan, a resident of Kiryat Shmona, said: “People here are already desperate, and that’s the most dangerous situation for our city. We feel abandoned. Neither I, nor my husband, nor our children should have to live like this.” Only around half the residents who were living in Kiryat Shmona prior to October 7 remain in the city. Echoing these feelings, Ruhina Wolf, a resident of the nearby kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar, said: “We are completely losing the north.”
“There’s the State of Israel and there’s Amiad junction northward,” says Metulla’s Miri Menashe. “Why is it more urgent to rehabilitate houses in Bat Yam, Holon, and in Ramat Gan and not roads and hospitals and infrastructure in the north?” She remembers how the government had declared that the IDF had destroyed 80% of Hezbollah’s missile array in March 2025. “If that’s the 20% they’ve got left,” she concludes bitterly, “then we’re in a terrible state.” The economic consequences for the north have also been devastating, with business closures, the collapse of tourism, and depopulation.
As I wrote back in March 2024, without addressing the problem of Hezbollah it will be impossible to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many insist that Israel’s occupation of territory is the primary cause of the conflict. But Israel withdrew from Lebanon and still faced a terrorist entity committed to its destruction. Some said that the Shebaa Farms was now a legitimate casus belli for Hezbollah, but this is a minor land dispute with dozens of equivalents in other countries. While it is true that, given the First Lebanon War and the lengthy occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was to some degree a problem of Israel’s own making, this does not excuse its ongoing existence. Hezbollah and Hamas provide a rare example of non-state actors who have drawn reinvasion after successfully liberating their territory from occupiers. The primary driver of Israel’s main concern about withdrawing from the West Bank is that we will face a similar scenario to the one we have faced in Gaza and Lebanon.
On the other hand, continued war has devastated the north without defeating Hezbollah. Israel can continue this attritional fighting indefinitely, but not if it wants to rehabilitate the entire country. The prospects of a military solution to the Hezbollah problem are no greater than a diplomatic one. Presumably there will be another ceasefire, and the north will open up again while Hezbollah rebuilds, north of the Litani River. Some will say that if Israel reaches a deal with the Palestinians the problem of Hezbollah will vanish, but this is a considerable gamble. As I wrote above, the experience of post-withdrawal Lebanon is not a great advertisement for withdrawing from the far more strategically significant hill country of the West Bank. Perhaps we just need to free ourselves from solutionist illusions, whether we dream of total peace or total victory. On the other hand, trying to “manage” Israel’s conflicts hasn’t had much success either. Perhaps instead we need to wait for something more fundamental to change, whether that be the fall of the Iranian regime, or some other unforeseen rupture that will create an opening for a true transformation in Israel’s situation. If reading this makes you despondent – if it’s insufficiently idealistic or triumphalist for you – please tell me what I’ve got wrong. If you think I’ve missed an obvious exit ramp – diplomatic, military, or otherwise – please tell me where in the comments.
So this is going to sound dark and immoral. And it is dark. But the reality is that there is always a solution. These conflicts got solved a very specific way before WWII. Israel does have the military capacity to collapse Lebanese society altogether, as Hizballah is trying to do to Israel. And it can do so from the air.
Do I like that idea? Not remotely. But the people living in Lebanon should like it even less than I do. In fact, they should dislike it enough to solve the Hizballah problem themselves.
This is something that, for all their problems, the Israeli right gets correct: Israelis instinctively take responsibility for the civilians who are standing by as their local militias try to kill Israeli civilians. It is not and should not be primarily Israeli responsibility. The onus should be on the international community, the NGOs, the Europeans, the global left, etc etc to get Lebanon moving to deal with this. It should not ultimately be Israel’s responsibility to deal with a militia in territory it does not maintain sovereignty over.
The Lebanese Army is there to prevent civil war, not to start it. The situation of the Christians is miserable after the last decade of financial crisis and to suggest they could be motivated into waging war on Hezbollah if Israel just bombed them enough is ridiculous.
The situation was tenable prior to Israel starting the last war, with Hezbollah holding its fire despite being bombed by Israel on a regular basis. The latest round kicked off after Israel initiated the current war with Iran. If you're casting about for suggestions, perhaps they shouldn't have done that?